Activists protest the surveillance of U.S. citizens by the NSA outside the Justice Department, where President Obama gave a major speech on changing the NSA on Jan. 17. / Win McNamee, Getty Images

by Aamer Madhani, USA TODAY

by Aamer Madhani, USA TODAY

In his long-awaited address on government surveillance Friday, President Obama announced he was seeking a modest path to help reassure Americans that their civil liberties aren't being trampled on, and he offered his most robust defense of the American intelligence security apparatus that he says has been unfairly smeared in recent months.

"In an extraordinarily difficult job, one in which actions are second-guessed, success is unreported, and failure can be catastrophic, the men and women of the intelligence community, including the NSA, consistently follow protocols designed to protect the privacy of ordinary people," Obama said. "They are not abusing authorities in order to listen to your private phone calls or read your e-mails. When mistakes are made â?? which is inevitable in any large and complicated human enterprise â?? they correct those mistakes."

In his speech at the Justice Department, he called for the creation of an independent advocate to represent privacy and civil liberty concerns in "significant" cases, and he vowed that the United States won't listen in on phone calls of allies - a practice that drew the ire of Brazil's Dilma Rousseff and Germany's Angela Merkel.

On the most controversial National Security Agency program, Obama said he will make some changes in how the agency accesses and uses its telephone metadata program, which has led to the government warehousing of basic information about nearly every phone call made to and from the USA.

He called on the intelligence community and Attorney General Eric Holder to come up with a plan within 60 days for maintaining the metadata program without the government holding onto the data.

Obama also called on the NSA to seek permission from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court before querying the metadata. Effective immediately, Obama narrowed the standard of phone records the NSA could pursue to two steps removed from a number associated with a terrorist organization instead of three.

For privacy and civil liberty advocates who wanted to see the metadata program scrapped altogether, the president's actions will be seen as falling short of real reform.

The president's review panel - which included intelligence community veterans Mike Morrell, former CIA deputy director, and Richard Clarke, a senior national security aide in the Clinton and George H.W. Bush administrations - concluded that the metadata program hasn't played a significant role in thwarting a terrorist attack.

But Obama suggested that had the metadata program been in place before the 9/11 attacks, the intelligence community may have been able to prevent it.

In making the argument - one first publicly aired by former FBI director Robert Mueller - he noted that NSA analysts knew one of the 9/11 hijackers, Khalid al-Mihdhar, made a phone call from San Diego to a known al-Qaeda safe house in Yemen. NSA analysts saw that call because they were monitoring the safe house, but they could not see that the call was coming from someone within the USA.

Not surprisingly, the president gave little attention to the role of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, whose revelations about the extent of intelligence community's surveillance practices undoubtedly led Obama to this moment.

"Given the fact of an open investigation, I'm not going to dwell on Mr. Snowden's actions or motivations," said Obama, who uttered Snowden's name twice during the address. "Moreover, the sensational way in which these disclosures have come out has often shed more heat than light, while revealing methods to our adversaries that could impact our operations in ways that we may not fully understand for years to come."

The key question is: What's next?

In his speech, Obama drew the outlines for greater transparency, but there is much that Congress and his administration will need to color in.

Will Congress approve the creation of independent advocates on the FISC?

Will liberals and libertarian lawmakers spurn Obama's defense of the metadata program and press ahead with measures floating in both chambers of Congress that would end the metadata program?

And how will the president deal with the inevitable battle he will face from hawkish members of Congress, the technology industry and privacy advocates who will have disparate interests in the conversation about placing the metadata in the hands of a third party?

For Obama, the conversation - and inevitable battle - is just beginning.